Shit. He spelled himself invisible, hoping it would make a difference, and caught up with the women as they barged inside.
“Lydia?” Beatrix’s voice shook. “Rosemarie? Miss Massey?”
No one answered. But their lockets flared yet again—a response of a different sort. For a second he thought shewould faint. But as he jumped toward her, she clattered into the kitchen.
It was empty. The dining room, too. No one was in the basement or any of the rooms on the second floor, and as they ran up the stairs to the top level, he had visions of all three women laid out on the floor of the master bedroom he once swept, their eyes glassy, their hearts stopped.
Except no one was there, either. It made sense, of course, because if the wizards did kill Lydia, they would make damn sure it looked like an accident. But it was hard to keep hold of that thought with Beatrix’s fear coursing through him, adding to his own.
She wrapped her arms around herself. “Wherearethey?”
“Let’s check outside,” Miss Knight said, looking out the window to the fallow garden.
As they closed the front door behind them, the charms embedded in their lockets burned again—a few times in quick succession, a brief pause, then more spells.
They looked around the expansive lawn in the fading light, braced for bodies, but finding none. Finally, perhaps ten minutes after the last time their charms went off, Peter leaned against the gazebo, trying to reason through the shared panic. The wizard had probably left. Whatever he’d been doing appeared to be done. And if this Morse wasn’t covering up a triple murder, mightn’t he have been hiding recording equipment in whatever area of the house he thought the League met?
Best to go back in and figure out what they were dealing with.
“I’m heading inside,” he whispered to Beatrix. “Stay out until we know what he’s stuck you with.”
Beatrix reached out a hand and managed to grab his still-invisible arm. “You think he’s gone?”
“Seems likely.”
“Then I need to make a call,” she said, and dashed for the house.
He caught up with her just as she reached the porch. “It’stapped?—”
“I know,” she said.
Then she was through the door and in the study, telephone in hand. Miss Knight followed, bumping into him as she crossed into the room.
“Mayor Croft, I’m so glad you’re still there,” Beatrix said into the receiver, the words tumbling out in a rush. “Have you seen Lydia this afternoon?”
Her face cleared at his answer. She let out a great whooshing breath and he sagged against the doorway, weak with their combined relief.
“Oh—oh, good,” she said, and Peter knew she was holding back so the people who might listen to the conversation later wouldn’t realize how worried she had been.
She sat in the chair by the phone. “When were they there?”
Then she said “oh,” but it was a markedly different “oh.” She said, “I see,” and, “Thank you very much, Mayor,” and put the phone in its cradle, tensed up all over again.
“What is it?” Miss Knight said.
“They were all at his store—Lydia, Rosemarie and Miss Massey—but they left an hour ago,” she said, keeping her voice down.
“They might be running other errands,” Miss Knight said.
She shook her head, taking sharp, shallow breaths, her panic bleeding over to him again. “They told him they were going home. Even if you don’t cut through the woods, the walk from the store takes no more than thirty-five minutes. They should have been here before us.”
He forced his own breathing back to a normal pace. This was not the way the wizards would eliminate a threat—surely not? He wanted to tell Beatrix so, but he couldn’t tip his hand that he was here. And he wanted to hold her, but he couldn’t do that, either. After what had happened today, he couldn’t trust himself to get within a yard of her.
Instead, it was Miss Knight who put her arms around Beatrix, Miss Knight who said, “It’s OK.”
She whispered something that made Beatrix nod. He watched Beatrix stand up and put herself back to some semblance of rights. And though he was glad, intellectually, that she had such a friend, how heenviedMiss Knight.
He stepped out of the doorway, took invisible demarcation stones from his invisible pockets and laid them along the hallway. Then he stepped into a corner and, so quietly even he could barely hear the words, said,“Lang read leoht.”
